Vehicle Ideas / Vehicle Monsters...

[Showster]

Okkie dokkies I can get my head around vehicles for flyers, wheeled etc.. But What if I wanted to make a ride able monster / mech / camel alah ...

http://woodytondorf.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/dino20riders.jpg

I've got some dino models and can make them jump around as pawns no problem, but what if I wanted to make them work as vehicles... I can get my head around having different seats for gunners etc... but how would you go about controlling the walking animations speed / fire animations etc...

If I have any joy I'll write up a tutorial.

Greg

[horstdraper]

Animation-wise it probably would be very similar to any regular character, except the size of such "character" would make any glitches in animation more visible. You will have to cover those up with some IK for walking on uneven surfaces and clever animation blending techniques for state transitions (i.e run->stop->run, stride length based on speed). Also at no event paws should slide on surface while "on ground" it will be very noticeable. One of the ways to make sure it doesn't happen is to make your animation tell your code how much to move the character in space. In CGI world this is done by usage of stride bones, it's basically a bone that represents a stationary(during single cycle) point on the ground to help determine how far and which way character moved during every animation frame. It would help make nonlinear walk cycles and prevent sliding(in theory even when blending with other animations). Idk if Unreal has anything specific for stride bones, maybe someone else knows about it. For now take a look at those nodes in Animation tree editor.
SkelControlFootPlacement - makes line checks and attempts to place bone on surface
AnimNodeBlendBySpeed
AnimNodeBlendByPosture - blends depending on posture(crouched, standing)
AnimNodeBlendByDirectional

[Showster]

Thanks for the info much appreciated :)

[Blade[UG]]

That. Is. The. Greatest. Image. Ever.

You win the Internet.

[TheSpaceMan]

Oh thats from dino riders. I had a few of those when I was younger.
Can't remember the story, just that they had dinosaurs with laser weapons and seats.

[Showster]

Hmm its proving to be a pain in the arse. I tried making it some kind of walker but no joy so far.

I'd be cool if for example, you could have like a pawn that walked up to a vehicle pressed use and then it spawned a vehicle that used the pawn system instead of the driving / flying stuff. Dunno if that makes sense to anyone LOL.

Glad you lot are liking the cheesy pic hehe

[geodav]

try checking the hero/titan code from UT3 and check Darknet's thread in the UT3 coding section

would great if you can get it working

[Showster]

Thanks Geodav, I saw that codamod did a horse which is pretty awesome! That replaces the hoverboard.